I Corinthians 14: 26What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.  29Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.  36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.  39Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

Focus verses: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.”

Yesterday, I was gassing up the car at a filling station, when I read the following words: “Do not leave the pump unattended; all spills are your responsibility.” Next to it I saw the corporate logo of the service station: BP. “Oh Man, I thought; now they’re blaming me!” If that wasn’t scary enough, once the tank was full and the gas stopped flowing, the digital read-out said, “Please see station attendant.” Too late to run or hide; my face is probably on the security camera already. I was feeling picked on, put upon, and put down.

I mention that because many of you may also have the same feeling in response to today’s passage, of being picked on, put upon and put down. I’m referring to the words, “Women should remain silent in the church.” As I hope to show, these words probably don’t really address the issue that we often make it try to address. But I hope that over the course of my message you pick up on my excitement about two things that this passage does address. One of them we discerned as a church, in the year before we moved here, as being very important for our church’s future: small groups. Although the passage doesn’t use the words, “small groups,” hopefully I can make clear what this passage implies about them. The other thing this passage addresses is ministry. Not just my ministry, not just ordained ministry, not just women in ministry, but everybody’s ministry, yours, mine and ours. So, small groups and our ministries: those are what I’m most eager to address today, because those are what I think this passage is really addressing.

But first, we have to deal with the question of women’s leadership in the church. Last week I spoke about a minority report and a majority report about what constitutes the gift of speaking in tongues. I told you that the majority of me goes with the majority report on that. This week I’ll give you the majority and the minority report on women in public, visible, verbal leadership in the church, and tell you why all of me goes with the minority report.

The majority report, when you add up all the voices over twenty centuries of Christian history, has said that this passage, and at least one other, effectively forbids women from clergy leadership roles. But when you ask just what do you mean by ministry and clergy, the answer so often has been so institutional, so hierarchical and so authoritarian, I have to agree: women should not be in ministry. But then, neither should men. Nobody should be in ministry, not if ministers and clergy are supposed to stand between people and God, or between people and the church institution, and mediate the flow of grace and forgiveness and salvation between them and God. That’s a recipe for keeping people childish and dependent upon experts and authorities. That is directly at odds with the definition of pastoral ministry that Paul gives in Ephesians 4:12-14, “to equip God’s people for [their] works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” That is a servanthood kind of power, a power under, rather than power over, a power that serves to encourage and grow everyone else’s power. Beyond that kind of power, no one should go, not in the name of God. But I would wager this morning that many of us can name women in our personal histories who have exercised exactly that kind of supportive, nurturing, empowering servant leadership that Paul describes.

To say that women shouldn’t exercise visible and strategic ministry roles is also at odds with what Paul says to women, and about women, in other New Testament passages, including in this very same letter. In Chapter 11, Paul gives instructions about when men and women do pray or prophesy in the church. He obviously assumes they will, and even affirms it. In the first chapter of the letter we read that Paul has learned about the problems in Corinth through correspondence with a woman, Chloe, who must be some sort of leader among the house churches there. He obviously respects what she has to tell him. Read the list of church leaders whom Paul greets in his letter to Rome and some of them are women. The same with some of the church leaders he mentions in his letter to the Philippians: women.

Telling women that they cannot exercise certain gifts in church also goes against the main thrust of the biblical witness about women: that from the very creation of humanity, that “In the image of God he created them male and female.” So it takes men and women together to reflect the image of God. It also contradicts the respectful and inclusive way that Jesus related to women. He did not make them apostles; sending women by themselves into that world as the first cross-cultural pioneer missionaries would have done them no service. But there were women, like Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet to learn, the posture of a disciple.

So, we’ve established that Paul respects, consults and corresponds with female church leaders, like Chloe in Corinth. And then he says, “Women should remain silent in the church.” What gives? Well, first of all, dispense with notions and questions about where men and women fit into ranks and hierarchies of church power, because church as Paul describes it in this very same passage is definitely not about that kind of hierarchical or institutional power.

Secondly, disengage the question of silence from the whole matter of praying or prophesying or teaching. Paul doesn’t use those words in the passage under question. Maybe the silence he recommends refers to something else. That’s what a growing minority report of scholars are saying, some of them with missionary experience.

I read recently of missionaries, long ago, to the interior of China, who planted new churches among a people for whom very few women had ever had any kind of formal education, or experience in a classroom, educational setting, before becoming Christians. The men had, but not many women. When men and women sat together in these new churches, the men knew how to conduct themselves during formal teaching and worship, how to listen and process what they were hearing, formulate questions and wait their turn during discussion. The women did not, because they had never been given that opportunity before becoming Christian. So the teachings and proceedings were being interrupted by these inexperienced women, often by questions like, “What did he say? What did he mean by that?” or by other business that would intrude, such as, “I’m glad to see your son is doing better,” or “How did it go at the market, yesterday?” This happened in those new Chinese churches, but only because these women, with no previous formal education, were suddenly thrown into a new situation, without preparation, with a new set of protocol for speaking, learning and listening.

Was that the problem in the ancient Corinthian house churches? Like with those women in China? Women in ancient Greece were regularly denied the kinds of educational opportunities that men were given. Now, in the new churches that Paul has planted, men and women are seated and learning together, which is already quite revolutionary. Is Paul just saying, “Women, don’t talk and interrupt the teaching, prophesying and praying during your gatherings, because, among other things, its disgraceful?”That they shouldn’t be interrupting the proceedings with questions or distractions, but wait till they get home if they want to review the teaching with lots of questions and different directions? I have no 100% fool proof evidence to that effect, and it doesn’t answer all the questions. But it best answers for me the most important question: why and how Paul can elsewhere acknowledge and affirm certain female leaders, as does the rest of the Bible, and here tell women to be silent. He doesn’t say or use the verbs for teach or preach or prophesy, just the verbs, “be silent” and “speak.” Otherwise, where women had the gifts and the training and experience to be teachers and servant leaders, like Chloe, Paul treats them as part of his team. Same with Priscilla and Aquilla, a husband and wife team he first met in Corinth. That’s the minority report on Paul and women in leadership, its where I stand on what Paul says about women in church leadership, and its getting less lonely of a minority all the time.

The minority report also best fits with the thrust of this whole passage, the whole context of I Corinthians chapters 12-14, indeed the entire I Corinthian letter: Whatever gifts the Holy Spirit has given you, use them, for the edification of the whole church, whoever you are, whatever your sex. That’s all that the word “submission” means. If you do this out of love, for the love of your brothers and sisters, then God will make these gifts work together beautifully, harmoniously and interdependently, because, “God is not a God of disorder but of harmony,” in verse 33.

So when you get together for worship, Paul says in verse 26, “everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” Just as you shouldn’t interrupt, so you shouldn’t monopolize the time. Paul adds, “If a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged (vv. 30-31).” In that way, everybody is “submissive” to each other, not just the women.

Consider with me just how revolutionary this kind of advice was at the time. Most of the Corinthian Christians were coming out of a pagan religious background where the spirits were allegedly most accessible only to trained, initiated and uniquely gifted prophets, priests and shamans. When they went into a trance and said or prophesied or demanded something, you had to take whatever they said by faith. In effect, your faith was as much in the prophet or priest as in his or her god or their teaching. What’s more, there was no telling what those spirits would do with the priest or the shaman: he had no control. It could be quite dramatic. Or embarrassing. Or entertaining. By contrast, in the Christian gatherings, the Spirit and his gifts are equally available to all members. And our gifts are of equal value, even though they’re different. And if the Spirit inspires or instructs you in some way, you can still take your time, take your turn, listen and treat each other respectfully because, as Paul says, “The spirit of the prophets is subject to the control of the prophets.”

And remember that the Jewish members were coming out of synagogues where the men sat in front and participated in the rites and ceremonies, while the women sat in back with the children, behind a lattice screen, and could only listen. But in the church, the question was not so much if women participated in worship, prayer and teaching, but how they participated. That shows just how much God and His Spirit are creating a new community that is harmonious, yet without domination and hierarchy.

Therefore, when we gather, Paul says, “everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” Gee, why don’t we worship the way Paul describes? Why don’t we dispense with the bulletin, the order of worship, the sermon, and just see what people come with, what the Spirit might have given them to share? Well, if we tried that here on a Sunday morning, with average attendance bumping past 70 people, we could be here all day. I would hope so, because hopefully our spiritual lives are such vibrant, living things, in which God is teaching us all sorts of things and we feel eager and compelled to share them with others, that we would need all day for everyone to contribute their piece.

Actually, we do some of that in this church already. Just not on Sunday mornings. We do some of that in our sharing, yes, and some of that in Christian Education. But we do it most and best in our small groups. We have two of them now. We have the people for more.

And those small groups are more like the kinds of church gatherings that Paul was addressing in today’s passage. History and archaeology both tell us that the church of Corinth, of Ephesus, of Rome, of Jerusalem for that matter, was not one big church meeting in a time and place like this, but a collection of house churches,with a total attendance of maybe 10 to 20 people, men, women and children. The details of this letter, I Corinthians, bear this out.

But those small house gatherings weren’t the only places they met. The First Church of Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 2, was meeting in two places: in the big Jerusalem Temple for a large-scale worship event that was more planned and scripted, and, we read, in their homes, for more intimate fellowship, teaching, prayers and the breaking of bread. In effect, they had big group worship events, and small groups. And so can we. This Sunday morning worship service is like that Jerusalem temple gathering. But among us are enough people for five or six small groups. If we’re not in one, think about joining or starting one if you wish to experience the kind of spiritual connectedness, accountability, interdependence, maturity and mutual up-building that Paul is encouraging on us today.

So, while we fixate on the words, “Women should be silent in the church,” the main point of this passage really is, “let everything be done decently and in order….For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.” Today’s word then challenges us to recognize, respect and give space to the development of everyone’s gifts for ministry. Someone has said that the true measure of a church is not its seating capacity but its serving capacity. When you think of the ministries and gifts of the Spirit already in this congregation, its fair to call us “little big church.” Now that we’re in this new location, think also of the possibilities for us to have a ministry of ministry development for all believers, including and especially young, emerging leaders, from whom new ministries may emerge, maybe even new churches. Every time a leader and servant and gifts and ministries emerge among us, will we recognize them in him? And in her? May it be.

I Corinthians 14: 13For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 17You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified.  18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.  20Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. 21In the Law it is written:

“Through men of strange tongues  and through the lips of foreigners
I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.  22Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. 23So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? 24But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”

1. What is the gift of “tongues,” and how do they serve believers and non-believers?

2. Since this was an issue mentioned only in the Corinthian churches in the First Century AD, how does this gift, and Paul’s advice, apply to us today?

This sermon comes about thirty-five years late. But I hope you’ll listen anyway. Many of us may remember how, during the 1970′s, the Charismatic movement broke onto the scene and affected more than the usual Pentecostal churches, but also mainstream Protestant and even Catholic churches as well. There were and are also some Mennonite churches that were touched by the Charismatic movement, some of which are still going and growing. But there were concerns and controversies about the Charismatic movement similar to what Paul addresses in today’s passage, twenty centuries before.

For those of us who weren’t there, the Charismatic movement was a renewal movement in which the more extraordinary and spectacular gifts of the Holy Spirit were manifested, most notably, the gift of speaking, praying and worshiping in previously unknown languages. I’m not aware that any were documented to have been languages of other human tribes or nations, and therefore, that the person so endowed went on to preach the gospel in such languages to such people, as what happened in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection. But that’s why this movement was also called “Pentecostal,” because, like that first Christian Pentecost, it involved “speaking in [unlearned] tongues.” And that’s why that gift in particular is a key feature of Pentecostal belief, practice and churches today.

People touched by such a gift say that it connects their spirit directly with God’s Holy Spirit, in such a way as to bypass the normal language processes of our minds, thereby touching us at a level beyond human words. It is, they often say, “their spirit language,” or “the language of heaven,” and praying or speaking in that way deeply enriches and renews their spirits.

That is also the answer that the majority of Bible scholars gives to my first question, “What is the spiritual gift of speaking in other tongues?” That also answers the second part of that question, “How does this gift serve believers?” Paul himself says, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays,” But he adds, “but my mind is unfruitful.”

Its not only the classical Pentecostal theologians who say that about praying and worshiping in unknown tongues, by the way. Its the majority report of other Bible scholars who are definitely not Pentecostal nor Charismatic, who are high church people like Bishop N.T. Wright, or ancient Orthodox or Catholic thinkers like St. Augustine, or even great Protestant heavyweights like Martin Luther, and, of course, Menno Simons, even though none of them seem to have practiced that gift.

Now I am not in a position today to argue for or against what they say. Advocating for or against the charismatic movement is not the point of this message. As Paul himself said, “Who am I to judge another man’s servant?” Furthermore, I do not want to put myself in the position of telling the Holy Spirit what gifts he is going to give his church or not. Because this is His church, not any one of ours. If praying in other, unlearned language, of heaven or earth, is part of someone’s spiritual practice, and it has the effect that I have described on them, I’ll take them at their word.

Where I do draw the line, however, is whenever anyone says that speaking in other tongues is the only, or the primary, sign that we have the Holy Spirit. Or that those who speak in tongues are better or more God-pleasing Christians than those who don’t. And most Pentecostal or Charismatic theologians worth their salt don’t say that, either. After all, this Corinthian letter is the only one where tongues are listed among the spiritual gifts, and the Corinthian churches seem to be the only ones among the churches Paul planted where that gift seemed to operate.

But Paul also says, in verse 22 that tongues are for unbelievers. That’s a little harder to understand. Because he then goes on to say that if non-believers come into a church service where everyone is speaking in tongues, they’ll consider everyone to be crazy, and look for the quickest way out of the room. Over the years I’ve heard a number of people talk about their experience in a Charismatic or Pentecostal service in that very same way. They were looking for the first exit out, because it seemed so strange and chaotic to them.

So, how can speaking in other tongues be a sign for unbelievers, when, as often as not, as Paul himself admits, it freaks them out? Well, that’s where the minority report comes in. There’s a minority of Bible scholars who say that all that Paul is referring to, when he writes about speaking in other tongues, is the problem that urban, cosmopolitan churches of the First Century must have had with all the different languages represented by their members. To worship together, they would have had to use some language commonly used for trade, government and entertainment, in effect, pretty much everyone’s second or third language, a language that didn’t reach as deeply down into their hearts and spirits as did the language they learned on their mothers’ laps, what we call “a maternal language.” In the case of Paul’s churches, that common language was the Greek of our New Testament.

Pray or meditate or prophesy or teach in the language you learned in the home, and it will touch the deep, deep recesses of the heart. And so a pastor I knew, at a Mennonite Church in Ontario, said that, as he attended aging and ailing members on their death beds, as they prayed their last prayers of release and commitment to God, they often reverted to the Low German of their childhood. The last words uttered with their last breaths, were often in Low German, even though they had functioned throughout most of their lives quite well in English.

But if everyone in those churches prayed and taught and worshiped in their maternal Low German and English, and, let’s see, let’s add the Mohawk Indian members, plus French Canadians, plus members who might have joined from the Chinese and Indian and African and Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, and have them all praying and worshiping and teaching in their own languages, visitors there might indeed walk out shaking their heads and saying, “They’re stark-raving loony!”

Is that all that Paul was addressing in this passage on speaking in other tongues? That some are more gifted than others by the Spirit with the ability to learn other human languages and to translate them for the sake of the church and its mission? And to preach the gospel and translate it into other languages? Like Paul himself, who says, “I speak in tongues more than all of you.” Or maybe he means, “I speak in more languages than all of you.” Which would have been true for him as a missionary.

If so, that would certainly explain how and why “tongues are for unbelievers.” Because Christian mission often involves overcoming hurdles between people and cultures, like language. There’s a big part of me that would like to say that this is all that’s at stake in Corinth: that the Corinthians must accept the fact that, if all of them with all their different maternal languages are going to get along and edify each other, many of them will have to operate in another “tongue” or language besides the one that speaks most deeply to our spirits: our maternal languages. And if we do speak or pray or worship in our maternal language, then pray, or make sure, that someone interprets for the others. Or translate for yourself. In the world of Biblical scholarship, that would be what I call “the minority report” on the gift of tongues.

But while that explanation answers a few questions (like How can the gift of other tongues be for non-believers?) it raises a few others. Like, how can Paul say, “if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful,” when the mind is made quite fruitful by anything said in our mother tongue? And then, as I read and researched on this passage, I kept wondering, who am I to differ with the likes of N.T. Wright, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Menno Simons and perhaps a quarter of a billion Pentecostals and Charismatics worldwide and counting? That would be beyond saying, “We have a disagreement here,” to saying, “You’ve deluded yourself.” I’m not ready to go there, not on that matter at least.

Especially not since the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have often had a noteworthy and powerful history of mission. They seem to have the most power and impact upon societies in which sorcery, magic, divination and other occult arts are rampant. Also in areas where such things are tied in with political and economic injustice and oppression, like Haiti, much of Africa and Latin America. Their dramatic clashes between devil power and Holy Spirit power seem to do more to rescue prostitutes, dope dealers and career criminals than do polite and intellectual coffee klatches about the latest book on spirituality. Then there’s the indisputable historic fact that, whenever Charismatic renewal has happened, it has often shaken up and broken down barriers of race, class, education and ethnicity among Christians and denominations. When the modern Pentecostal movement began in Los Angeles, in 1906, the Azusa Street tent meetings were one of the few places in the country where you would find Anglos, Mexicans, Native Americans, Asians and African Americans together, in warm, friendly and equal ways. That first generation of Pentecostals was even pacifist, even during the war hysteria of World War I.

In fact, it would be safe to say that Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians and even the Mennonites in much of the Two-Thirds World in the Southern Hemisphere today are Pentecostal. Not that they all speak in tongues and buy the whole doctrinal Pentecostal package. They don’t. But being face-to-face with the undeniable realities of spiritual “principalities and powers and wickedness in high places,” demonic and human, they’re half-way Pentecostal in practice. Having no economic or political resources to defend themselves and overcome these challenges, they rely on the Holy Spirit through dreams, and discernment of evil spiritual presences and powers. They rely on Him just as much for courage and healing and power for witness, where half the time, for them, Christian witness is something done under duress. And so our Mennonite brothers and sisters in Ethiopia are often called, “Pentes,” for “Pentecostal.” As we also enter a society that is increasingly magical, mystical and spiritual in neo-pagan, occultic and shamanistic ways, we too might just need to become more “Pente,” that is, like our African brothers and sisters in our reliance upon the Holy Spirit for special gifts of power, discernment and witness.

So I’m not about to challenge the majority report on what constitutes the gift of speaking in other tongues. For now, suffice it to say that the majority of me, personally, goes along with the majority report: about 55 to 44%. Five to four if I were the Supreme Court. But let’s imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to go along with the minority report and say that this passage is really about the problems of teaching, preaching and worship in a common language when there are so many maternal languages represented among a church’s members. Now, where have we ever encountered a church like that?

Let’s see, in the back of our hymnals is an insert that we use once a year, the closest Sunday to Christmas. Its the song, “Silent Night,” and it has the first verse in seven languages including English: Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Vietnamese and Amharic. These represent the maternal languages of many of our members. Next Christmas we could have the numbers to sing an eighth and ninth verse– in American sign language, and Portuguese. We have members who could also sing it in Chinese and Arabic, and in the African languages of Tigrinya, Fulani, Yamba, Hausa, Kiswahili and Dioula, to name a few. Among our neighbors are those who could sing it in Somali, and in the Native American languages of Dakota, Lakota, Ojibwe, Mohawk, Guarani, Mayan, K’ichua and K’echi.

Going with the minority report this morning, this church is very strongly endowed with the gift of speaking in other tongues. And maybe we’re under-using them. We have at least six fairly fluent Spanish speakers among us, with others pretty far along the way toward fluency. Could some of them be in ministry to our large, Hispanic community? Could one or more of them even help form the nucleus of a new Spanish-speaking church some day? Are there other missionaries to other language groups and cultures yet to emerge from among us?

Barring that, what about learning at least a few words of the every day polite greetings and thanksgiving in, say, Spanish, Hmong or Somali, so that when you know you definitely are dealing with a Somali or Hmong or Hispanic cashier or neighbor or nurse or police officer, we can at least greet them or thank them in their language? Most of the time, whenever we do that, they beam with delight, even if we botch it up terribly, just because we’ve honored them by making some effort, taking some step, to honor them, their language, and their culture. Many of our newest neighbors are hearing things from long-term residents like, “Why don’t you go back to your country?” and “I shouldn’t have to press 1 on my telephone for service in English.” Those attitudes are getting more visible and more strident lately. We can break a lot of ice, show a lot of respect, and gain a hearing for ourself and for Christ by showing we care enough to at least learn how to say, “Hello” and “Thank you,” and “Goodbye.” That reflects well on the Christ who gives us such love and concern.

That moves us in the direction that Paul points us in verse 20, when he says, “Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” By that, he means what he said in the passage before, about all the spiritual gift, when he said, “Try to excel in gifts that build up the church,” and the church’s mission.

Some gifts work best at building us up personally, individually. Paul includes tongues in that category. So its best to practice it that way: personally and individually. Other gifts work to build us up together, corporately and communally, like the gift of prophesy. So share it with the community. But any gift can become a grief when it is misused just to build up our own personal honor and status. The greatest of all spiritual gifts is love. And love is the truest sign of being spiritual adults.

I Cor. 14: 1Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 2For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 3But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.  6Now, brothers, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction? 7Even in the case of lifeless things that make sounds, such as the flute or harp, how will anyone know what tune is being played unless there is a distinction in the notes? 8Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? 9So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. 10Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. 11If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me. 12So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church.

Focus Statement: “Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church.”

Fourth of July content-free sermon: Questions to address: What is prophecy and why is it so important?

What is humility and why is it so important?

What do we do with that longing for belonging when it can divide us just as often as it unites us?

Someone I knew in college claimed to have seen Jesus, in a vision or a dream. So naturally we asked him, “What did he look like?” His answer: “He looked Middle Eastern.” Whatever that means.

But we don’t need to have dreams or visions to see the face of Jesus today. Ever since the Pentecost outpouring of Jesus’ Spirit, the Holy Spirit, Jesus appears to the world like the quilt on our altar. Notice all the connected pieces doing together what quilts do: providing covering and beauty. The pieces are different, but they each serve a common mission in their own unique way. And they do so by staying connected, and yet staying themselves, too. As long as the pieces don’t start fighting and tugging at each other and tearing at their threads and opening up holes between themselves. Then the quilt-like face of Jesus would be obscured in the world.

But that’s what seems to have been happening in the First Church of Corinth. The different pieces of the quilt were working against each other, with the differences in their spiritual gifts and qualities being used to tear the whole thing apart. Now the quilt pieces I have in mind were the different spiritual gifts the members brought to the Corinthian churches. In today’s passage, Paul talks about how the spiritual gifts of prophecy and speaking in other languages fit in together. They each have their place. But today’s passage reflects how one gift—the gift of tongues—was overshadowing the gift of prophecy, when it should have been the other way around.

Which raises my first question: What does Paul mean by prophecy? I’ll try to deal with the gift of speaking in tongues in next week’s message. But today, let’s stay on prophecy. Does Paul mean that people in the First Church of Corinth were suddenly getting seized by the Holy Spirit in such a way that they suddenly had a divine revelation about the future and couldn’t resist standing up to say, “Spain will win the World Soccer Cup over Netherlands, three to two?”

I doubt it. I was rooting for Ghana. Shows what kind of a prophet I am. But Paul himself gives us two definitions of prophecy. In the previous chapter, he says, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and knowledge, but have not love, I have nothing.” So prophecy must be something of a uniquely God-given insight into divine mysteries and knowledge. Like when I heard a priest speak about Zaccheus, the little man who wanted to see Jesus. When he kept saying, “To Jesus, there are no unknown, little people,” I was struck in my spirit by having the secrets of my heart exposed, and yet being given hope and relief. Because that was exactly how I had been feeling at the time: little and unkown. It was as though he had been reading my mail. But he hadn’t.

Paul gives us another angle on prophesy when he says, in today’s passage, “everyone who prophesies speaks to [people] for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.” So not only is prophesy something God-given, its people-directed. Directed toward the strengthening, encouragement and comfort of their souls, but also toward the strengthening, encouragement and comfort of their relationships. So that their gifts, talents, perspectives and contributions work together harmoniously, and beautifully, like the pieces on our altar quilt today. In that sense, I hope that in this message there’s something prophetic for someone, and not pathetic.

But this gift of prophesy is not just for preachers and sermons. I’ll go out on a limb this morning and make this promise, based on the Bible and experience: that if we put ourselves out there to try and strengthen, encourage and comfort people, we will find ourselves having prophetic moments. Make enough phone calls or send enough cards or make enough visits to the sick, the shut-ins, those facing major life crises, and some day, someone will tell you, “My friend, something you said once made all the difference for me between a long, dark, lonely and sleepless night, and sleeping like a baby.” Or, “your expression of concern was all that stood between me and giving up the Christian life.” Or, “that challenging question you put to me straightened out my life.” Put yourself out there, in those places where the gift of prophesy is needed, and if you don’t hear such responses in this life, you’ll surely hear them in the next. You may not remember having said such divinely-inspired things, but others will, for the powerful effect they had on their lives.

So that’s my answer to the first question: What is prophesy? And why is it so important? Its God-given insight for our strengthening, comfort and encouragement. Its God’s gift for the building up of persons and relationships.

Next question: What is humility and why is it so important, especially to our task of displaying the quilt-like face of Jesus? Well first, let me say something about what humility is not. We Mennonites make a big thing about humility. Good for us. We should be proud of that. Woops. But we have too often understood humility to mean the rejection and suppression of ourselves and our gifts. Sometimes we did that in big ways, like when some churches said, “No musical instruments in church—the ability to play one only draws attention to oneself.” As you can see, we blew through that one without blinking. Or it came across in more subtle ways: “I’ll remember your concern in my prayers, brother. And by the way, wasn’t that the second time you’ve stood up and asked for prayer this year?” Again, if that’s pride, well, then we take pride in letting people ask for prayer as often as needed.

Paul doesn’t mention the word humility in this passage, but I hear it calling for our attention in the twist that he gives to the whole matter of how and when we use our gifts. He doesn’t say, “Don’t seek to have spiritual gifts, because that’s prideful.” Nor does he say, “If you have spiritual gifts, keep them private; don’t draw attention to yourself,” even though that’s exactly what the Corinthians seemed to have been doing: drawing attention to themselves. Instead, Paul simply says, “You are eager to have spiritual gifts.” He assumes that they’ll want to have spiritual gifts. He admits it. He even seems to commend it. And he re-directs that desire to be spiritually gifted when he says, so “try to excel in gifts that build up the church.” Not just gifts that build us up personally. Not just gifts that might build up our own reputation, our status, our power and our honor in the community, but gifts that build up the community itself. Whatever gifts we have, use them with the freedom that comes from forgetting about ourselves and focusing on the needs of others.

So Its not a question of whether we’ll want to have gifts and talents and put them to full use. I hope we do. Its a question of how and why we use them. Its not a question of if we seek to excel in something and stand out, but what we seek to excel at and stand out for. Humility is not the suppression of our gifts but the submission of our gifts to a greater good than our own status or power. Humility is not about denying our gifts, but about deploying our gifts for the benefit of our neighbors and our relationships with them. That’s what humility is about.

My third question was, and always is: what will we do with our longing for belonging, and this desire to excel, to count and to contribute something in this world? Something unique to ourselves and worthy of notice? Because we will do something. That’s how God made us, because that’s how God himself is: supremely endowed with all good gifts, and ever ready to bless us and to grace us with them. The youth who’s slouching around in an alley, wearing gang colors and smoking dope, might look to his teachers and his parents like someone who’s never going to contribute to society, never get ahead and never excel at anything. But he’s actually working quite hard, sacrificially even, at great risk to himself, to contribute, belong and excel. At least to contribute to the gang, and excel at gang-type behaviors.

The kingdom of God is like that young man’s gang, in that it gives him and us a place to belong and ways to excel. But God’s kingdom gives us good, eternal, healthy places to belong, and good, eternal and healthy ways to excel. As when Paul says, “try to excel in gifts that build up the church.”

And if that still sounds just a little prideful, then I would add that this desire to excel and to contribute in our own unique way can be, but only once we start making comparisons. Its only prideful when we feel the need to show that we are more gifted than someone else, or that our gifts are more important than those of someone else, and when we can’t celebrate someone else’s gifts and affirm them because we’re afraid they’ll overshadow our own. As was happening at First Church of Corinth. Like when the Amish family was returning home from a church gathering and the father turned to his family in the buggy and said, “You know, I think we were the plainest, most humble people there today.” Making comparisons is what turns gifts into grief.

But if we just have to make comparisons, then let’s make them between ourselves and Jesus, who holds all the spiritual gifts. If we need to make comparisons, let’s make them between ourselves and ourselves, between what we once were and what we now are; and between what we now are and what we could yet be. That should keep us humble, because that is humility.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., best expressed all this in his sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct.” He called it that because, he said, we’re all made by God with a desire to join life’s parade and to hear the cheers, to step proud, high and happy, and take our turn marching up front and waving the baton. To me, King’s “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon has proven prophetic in every biblical sense of the word, including that of building up my person and strengthening my relationships. He gave it just a few months before his death, in 1968, preaching from that passage in Mark’s Gospel, when the two brother disciples, James and John, came to Jesus and said, “Grant us, Lord, to sit on your right hand and on your left, when you enter into your kingdom.” Through the gifts of today’s technology we’ll bring the voice of Dr. King to our sanctuary, for just a snippet of that sermon. See how Dr. King’s take on that James and John relates to our passage, especially the words, “try to excel in gifts that edify the church:”

“What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It’s very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, ‘You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?’

“But that isn’t what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, ‘Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you’re going to be my disciple, you must be.’ But he reordered priorities. And he said, ‘Yes, don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do. And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, ‘Now brethren, I can’t give you greatness. And really, I can’t make you first.’ This is what Jesus said to James and John. ‘You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared.” (Amen)

“And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That’s a new definition of greatness.

“And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.”